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c#.netasp.net-mvcwebapi

MVC - How to request and save a PDF file from a URL

I need to program an API that has 3 parts:

  1. Get the PDF file from PDF URL.
  2. Converting the PDF.
  3. Return the converted PDF file.

I have already completed part 2 and 3, What left is to fetch the PDF from URL and copy/download it to my MVC web API.

This is the test html code:

<script>
  $('#btnSendRequest').on('click', function() {
    $.ajax({
      type: "POST",
      url: "/Convertor/Html",
      data: {
        strUrl: "http://make-sense.co.il/kb/avcp-script-installation.pdf"
      },
      success: function(data) {
        return true;
      },
    });
  }); 
</script>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>
  <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.12.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
  <title>tester</title>
</head>

<body>
  <h1>tester html</h1>
  <div>
    <input id="btnSendRequest" type="button" value="SendHttpRequest" />

  </div>

My ActionResult function: "convertor/html" , gets the URL string from the web page. What I need is when I click the button, the PDF file will be automatically download to my server.

public ActionResult Html(string strUrl) 
    {
        return View();
    }

Anyone has any idea how that can be done? I also read somewhere on something called base64 encoding that might be also the solution, but I have never used it before.

Solution

  • What you might be looking for is the WebClient on .NET, see the following example, I just grabbed it from an example online, see here for full article.

    using System;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
    using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
    {

        // Download data.
        byte[] arr = client.DownloadData("http://url-to-your-pdf-file.com/file1");

        File.WriteAllBytes(path_to_your_app_data_folder, arr)

    }
    }
}

    you will need to do further processing by saving the byte[] as a file somewhere. the example code above is for a console app, but the same can be implemented in your mvc controller.